On Windows I think it is necessary, as PgAdmin has it's own libpq.dll - my version from 1.6.2 on Windows XP is "8.2.0.6338", so is obviously from the 8.2.0 series of PostgreSQL, which would equate to libpq.so.5 on Linux/Unix. The server doesn't have to be upgraded, but the client library PgAdmin uses evidently does.
You´re right, pgAdmin depends on that dll, but it stores a new one for a new major version (each of which has a seperate folder in "C:/Program Files/pgAdminIII/"). I have pgAdmin 1.4.3 (libpq.dll version 8.1.4.6142) and 1.6.1 (libpq.dll version 8.1.5.6286) running on the same machine with no problems. The back-end is version 8.1.0. I guess what you are proposing for linux is pretty much the same idea, only not as pretty. I think i´ll try to extract the libpq.so.5 from the rpm, without compiling postgres, and use that I´ll let you know if it worked (or not). Cheers, Willy-Bas
